How Does Geofencing Work? And How Can You Make It Work for Your Business?

Geofencing is a step toward the future of marketing. It also creates many opportunities to connect with a customer. But how does geofencing work in exact terms?

As geofencing is a rather new technology, businesses have yet a lot to learn about it. Many might have heard about it but are still on the fence about applying it to their strategy.

If you’re one of those, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to learn what it is and how you can use it for your business.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing is a location-based service that “fences” in a specific geographic area. It uses GPS, Wi-Fi, RFID, or cellular data to locate when the user has entered the virtual barrier. This then triggers a defined action.

This technology allows the targeting and tracking of consumers within a defined range for various purposes, but companies use it the most on marketing. It can allow them to send promotional messages where they’re relevant, such as when a user is near a shop. It also allows them to gather some marketing data by tracking the behavior of the customers.

How Does Geofencing Work

Creating a geofence is not at all complicated today. It can be as simple as drawing a circle with a specific radius around the target location. It uses a mapping service, such as Google Maps.

Whenever the users want to use the app for the first time, they must first allow it to use location services. Of course, they’ll have to turn it on in their phone’s settings as well. If they opt into location services, a company can then send alerts or perform other actions through the app.

These actions will only take effect when the user enters or exits the geofence. For example, a user walks into the geofence of a cafe. If the cafe has an app on the user’s smartphone with location services turned on, it can send an alert of a discount coupon or of the special for that day.

What’s good about geofencing is that once the company has set it up, they can change the messages they want to send. That’s not all; it has applications for the end-user as well.

Users can set up alerts on their own smartphones when they come in near certain destinations. They can, for example, set up their phone to send them a reminder to buy an item when they come close to a grocery store.

How You Can Make It Work for Your Business

The rise of mobile use makes geofencing more than a good marketing strategy as it allows you to make direct contact with the consumers within the area. There also other applications for it; below are the different ways you can use it for your business.

Marketing

This may be the number 1 use of geofencing, or at least it’s the most common application. The store can send alerts, promotions, discounts, and such direct to the smartphone. It’s the virtual equivalent of employees standing outside a store calling out customers or handing out fliers.

This increases the local sales, making geofencing perfect for local businesses. This also gives you valuable data about your campaign.

How many went in when they received the notification? How much time did they spend inside the store?

Geofencing adds other metrics to measure, which also adds depth to your analytics.

Audience Engagement

Sending notifications to people within an area is not only for advertising purposes. You can also use this technology to send messages to a certain group of people to engage them.

Holding an event? Have the attendees download the app and then set up a geofence.

You can then send them information about the event, alerts, and such when they arrive at the venue and during their stay. Geofencing also makes it possible for you to crowdsource posts in social media.

Employee and Property Monitoring

Some companies are now utilizing the geofencing technology to monitor their employees. Instead of having them do a manual input of their timesheets, having a geofence allows the system to track their time-ins and time-outs for you.

It also allows companies to monitor their property, like cars. They’ll be able to tell who took out what at what time.

Security

Being able to tell when a person/equipment arrives and leaves is a huge step for security. Although there’s still some polishing to do, it can work with security cameras to detect if anything is amiss.

It is important, however, that you get a geofencing provider that’s reliable and knowledgeable. See page for more information.

Smart Appliances

Do you manufacture appliances? Why not add geofencing to make it “smarter”?

Adding this technology to appliances let them detect when a user it at home, for example, triggering certain actions. The lights in the living room, for instance, will be able to turn themselves on when a user enters the property. When all the household members leave, they can turn themselves off.

Another scenario wherein geofencing is useful is when a child goes back home from school. This can send a notification to parents, allowing them to see what time the child arrived home. Pets with smart collars going out of a certain zone can also send a warning to the owners’ smartphones.

Social Media

Geofencing has a lot of social media applications as well. You can create filters, stickers, and such that are only available within a certain area. The audience in a concert would then be able to use location-based filters on their social media app.

Is Geofencing Right for Your Business?

The above are only some of the examples of how does geofencing work for your business. It’s not, by all means, the full scope of its limitations. Even in its early stages, though, it can already provide a lot of benefits.

If you need more business advice, visit our blog today and learn more about new technologies that can help you, such as artificial intelligence.